https://www.lilmixins.com/blogs/news.atomLil Mixins - News2019-05-21T11:48:00-04:00Lil Mixinshttps://www.lilmixins.com/blogs/news/lil-mixins-on-tv2019-05-21T11:48:00-04:002019-05-22T09:03:52-04:00Lil Mixins on TV!Lil Mixins
This past Sunday, Lil Mixins had a great TV feature. We were invited onto the Fox29 Philadelphia show Good Day Philadelphia, hosted by Lauren Johnson.

Lil Mixins Founder Meenal Lele brought her son Lazlo, who was the original inspiration for the creation of Lil Mixins 3 years ago.

Meenal explained to Lauren how the idea for Lil Mixins came to be, and how her background as an engineer helped her create the product that thousands of moms all over the country choose and love for Early Introduction.

And of course, you should share this article with a friend who might be interested.

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https://www.lilmixins.com/blogs/news/asthma-vs-anaphylaxis2019-05-14T11:24:00-04:002019-05-14T11:34:25-04:00Asthma vs AnaphylaxisLil MixinsLet's review the main differences (and similarities) between Asthma and Anaphylaxis. In both an asthma attack and anaphylaxis, the airways tighten. Mucus develops inside the airway to battle irritants, further restricting space.

In both cases, you may see wheezing, short or labored breathing, or coughing as the person...

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By age 3 our son had achieved the hat-trick. We had an official diagnosis of eczema (6 months), food allergies (11 months) and asthma (~2.5). I spent one birthday sleeping on a couch in the children’s hospital checking on him every hour.

Since this is a topic that confuses a lot of people, it’s a good time to discuss how asthma and anaphylactic allergies are, and are not, similar.

In both an asthma attack and anaphylaxis, the airways tighten. Mucus develops inside the airway to battle irritants, further restricting space. In both cases, you may see wheezing, short or labored breathing, or coughing as the person tries to open their airways. To make things more confusing, about half of asthma issues are thought to be caused by allergies to things like dust, mold, and pollen.

However, in chronic asthma or adult onset asthma, runny nose or “hay fever” type symptoms are common. On the other hand, a clear sign of an anaphylactic episode is swelling of the face, hives on the skin, vomiting or other digestive systems. These acute symptoms are very uncommon with asthma alone.

We can usually use context clues to tell the difference. Did he have a cold or runny nose? When was the last time he ate something? Are we seeing any hives on his neck or arms?

If you have known allergies and have acute onset issues in your airways, doctors recommend using your epinephrine first, because issues related to allergies can only be cleared with epinephrine. A fast-acting bronchodilator will open up the airways for asthma, but it won’t work if it’s anaphylaxis.

Unfortunately, as we’ve learned, the key is preventing the episodes all together. Anytime our son has a cold we start medications to make sure the asthma attack doesn’t happen. We are diligent about food and always carry epinephrine, no matter where we go.

And of course, you should share this article with a friend who might be interested.

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https://www.lilmixins.com/blogs/news/first-peanut-exposure-where-and-how-to-do-it2019-05-02T11:22:00-04:002019-05-02T15:12:07-04:00First Peanut Exposure - Where And How To Do ItLil Mixins
We all know how serious peanut allergies can be, so it makes sense that the official guidance from the AAP to start feeding your child peanuts early on can be scary.

But it doesn't have to be. Feeding your baby their first peanut can be managed safely, responsibly, and stress-free. Let's dive into it...

We've all heard the news stories about food allergies and the seemingly endless string of “poor Johnny found out he has a peanut allergy…” from friends, neighbors, coworkers, and more.

So it makes sense that the official guidance from the AAP to start feeding your child peanuts early on can be scary.

But it doesn't have to be. Feeding your baby their first peanuts can be managed safely, responsibly, and stress-free. Let's dive into how to give your baby their very first peanut, whether it's peanut powder, peanut puffs, or peanut butter.

The information below has been gathered and summarized from various official sources, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the NIAID Guidelines, and related Addendums.

The pediatric guidelines purposely divide patients into three groups based on their risk of a peanut allergy.

Low Risk Children

This group includes children with no family history of food allergy, no known food allergies, and no eczema.

For these babies, there is no reason to wait, worry, or do anything out of the ordinary. Doctors suggest low risk children be given peanuts starting when the family feels appropriate, in line with their customs and preferences. You can follow the instructions for first feeding below, and after that, continue to make peanuts a regular part (2-3 times a week) of their diet.

Medium Risk Children

Children with mild-to-moderate eczema

For medium risk children, the risk of a peanut allergy is still really low. If your child is medium risk, doctors suggest starting peanuts around 5-6 months old at home. For the first feeding, follow the instructions below, and maintain regular exposure to peanuts in baby’s diet 3-4 times per week for the first year.

High Risk Children

Children with severe eczema, egg allergy, or both

For children with severe eczema or an egg allergy, doctors recommend starting solid foods beginning at 4 to 6 months of age. First, start with a food other than peanut (mashed fruit or vegetables), so that you can establish that the baby is ready for solids. Again, follow the instructions below.

Baby's First Peanut Exposure

Almost all infants have a 4 month and 6 month well visit, which is a great time to discuss solids and early introduction with your pediatrician, and get assessed for signs of eczema. If you miss the 4- to 6-month time window, still start. Older babies who have not had peanut do have a higher likelihood of a peanut allergy, but the LEAP study showed that starting anytime between 4 and 11 months is better than not exposing them to peanuts at all during this time.

Feed your infant only when he or she is healthy; do not do the feeding if he or she has a cold, vomiting, diarrhea, or other illness.

Give the first peanut feeding at home and not at a day-care facility or restaurant.

Make sure at least 1 adult will be able to focus all of his or her attention on the infant, without distractions from other children or household activities.

Make sure that you will be able to spend at least 2 hours with your infant after the feeding to watch for any signs of an allergic reaction.

Feeding your infant

Prepare a full portion of one of the peanut-containing foods

Offer your infant a small part of the peanut serving on the tip of a spoon.

Wait 10 min.

If there is no allergic reaction after this small taste, then slowly give the remainder of the peanut-containing food at the infant’s usual eating speed.

What are symptoms of an allergic reaction? What should I look for?

Mild symptoms can include:

a new rash

a few hives around the mouth or face

More severe symptoms can include any of the following alone or in combination:

lip swelling

vomiting

widespread hives (welts) over the body

face or tongue swelling

any difficulty breathing

wheeze

repetitive coughing

change in skin color (pale, blue)

sudden tiredness/lethargy/seeming limp

If you have any concerns about your infant’s response to peanut, seek immediate medical attention/call 911.

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https://www.lilmixins.com/blogs/news/how-doctors-test-your-child-for-food-allergies2019-04-25T12:21:00-04:002019-05-02T15:21:52-04:00How Doctors Test Your Child for Food AllergiesLil Mixins
What’s the point of a test that is wrong at least half of the time?

And yet, when a food allergy is suspected, the first step is often an allergy test, specifically what is known as a skin-prick test or sometimes, IgE blood testing.

And yet, when a food allergy is suspected, the first step is often an allergy test, specifically what is known as a skin-prick test or sometimes, IgE blood testing.

So, should you drag your child to the allergist to undergo an uncomfortable skin prick session, or not? Here's a quick introduction to food allergy testing.

Things to Remember About Food Allergies

An important thing to remember is that as a general rule, food allergies are not sneaky. If symptoms show up after eating a food, then you might have an allergy.

Conversely, if you can sometimes eat the food, or if your child can eat a food without hives/anaphylaxis vomiting or other highly noticeable symptoms, there’s probably no allergy, and maybe no intolerance either.

In the end, eating a food and seeing a reaction is the only true way to confirm a food allergy.

But there are a few good reasons to go ahead with the skin prick testing or IgE blood testing:

Both can, with high certainty, rule out an allergy. If it’s negative, there’s almost definitely no allergy

Both can help differentiate a food intolerance, which is non-immunologic, and therefore not IgE mediated, from a food allergy

If there is a suspected allergy based on past history, then the tests can help confirm that

As a parent, there’s a strong urge to “just test them for everything.” But a lot of doctors recommend against that because of the high rates of false signals (also called false positives). An IgE sensitization is not the same as having an allergy. You may end up taking a bunch of foods out of your child’s diet for no reason.

What to Expect with IgE Testing

In skin prick testing, the doctor will place a drop of liquid containing the allergenic protein on the skin and then push down to prick through the top layer of skin. If your body already has the specific IgE antibody for that particular allergen, you’ll see a red puffy welt start to appear around that prick within fifteen minutes. After looking for welts and measuring the size, the doctor will wipe the area clean and apply a cortisone cream to stop any itching.

Our son's first skin prick test at the doctor's office

For IgE specific blood testing, a tube of blood is taken. The blood is sent to a lab where allergenic proteins are introduced to the blood, and the levels of specific IgE antibodies that show up are measured.

You’ll get a result for each allergen tested that from 0-100 kg/ IL. Higher scores in general mean more immune reaction, so a high score would likely indicate an allergy.

However you should not interpret the results without consulting a doctor. Different levels actually mean different things for each allergen, and it is quite common to see mildly elevated results all around in children who have other conditions such as eczema, asthma, or seasonal allergies.

We saw this with our son when he was first diagnosed and his eczema was not controlled. When the test was repeated a year later, all the values went down significantly across the board.

The printout showing our son's IgE blood test results

Oral Food Challenges

A doctor supervised oral food challenge is the one definitive test of a food allergy. This test is commonly used when it seems like someone may have outgrown a food allergy, based on IgE testing. Generally speaking, you will go to the doctor’s office and eat increasingly large amounts of the suspected allergen. This process takes four hours, so come prepared!

Our son doing his oral food challenge with syrup covered french toast

Once you have eaten a certain amount of the protein, you are considered to tolerate that allergen and therefore do not have an allergy. Why is it important to do this at a doctor’s office? Because a reaction can come on fast and you want to be right there with help if needed.

What About Home Food Allergy Test Kits?

These days, because my search history is all about food allergies, I see a lot of advertisements online for home-based food allergy or food intolerance screening tests.

I've done a bunch of research, and as far as I’ve been able to find, none of these diagnostic tests have been cleared by the FDA. That means that they have never created and presented data showing that their tests work.

Also, acupuncture, hair/urine testing, and any other such testing you may have heard of is also not proven.

When it comes to food allergies, it's important to focus on science-based testing and interpretation of results.

Conclusion

Hopefully this introduction to food allergy testing will be useful to you. If you have any further questions, definitely reach out to your child's pediatrician to get specific answers by a trained medical professional.

Remember that food allergy testing doesn't have to be stressful, and with proper care and management, you will pull through this uncertain period, just like we did.

And of course, you should share this article with a friend who might be interested.

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https://www.lilmixins.com/blogs/news/food-allergies-when-your-body-attacks-itself2019-04-23T14:33:00-04:002019-05-14T11:34:36-04:00Food Allergies: When Your Body Attacks ItselfLil Mixins
If you ask an allergist what a food allergy is, they might tell you something like it is “an IgE mediated immune response to a protein.”

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If you ask an allergist what a food allergy is, they might tell you something like “it's an IgE mediated immune response to a protein.”

Of course, this probably doesn’t mean much to you.

Luckily, we’re here to help explain allergies a bit more clearly.

A baby with hives, a common symptom of food allergy.

Your Immune System

First things first: Your immune system is a complex series of reactions designed to fight off threats and keep you healthy. The immune response starts when scouts, or IgE antibodies, see something and recognize it as a threat.

The scouts then shout “THREAT!” real loud, and that wakes up the fighter, or mast cells. Those guys respond to the “attack” by releasing a bunch of chemicals like histamine. These chemicals perform tricks like heating up the body, giving you a runny nose, making your eyes water, building up mucus and making you cough.

Generally, the immune system is really helpful and keeps all of us safe everyday. We can even teach the immune system to react to a virus with vaccines, which is pretty cool.

Food Allergies

So what’s the deal with food allergies? Well, the problem here is that those same scout antibodies decide to treat something simple and generally harmless like peanuts, dust, dog dander, or milk, like a threat, just like they treat a virus.

You’re probably wondering - why do some people’s bodies suddenly mistake something like peanuts or cat fur for a threat?

The article explains that a lone-star tick bite contains a sugar, alpha-gal, which is released into the body along with the tick *venom*. When the body fights off this tick bite, it mistakenly learns that alpha-gal sugar in the tick bite is also a threat. The next time that person eats red meat, which contains alpha-gal sugar, the body attacks like it’s been bitten by a tick again.

Another way to think about it is like this: Imagine for a moment that a little boy is taught that sharks are in water and sharks can hurt you. The next time that little boy is brought to a lake, he might refuse to go in because he mistakenly *knows* there will be sharks - even though we all know sharks do not live in lakes.

What Scientists Think

To connect all this together, here’s what scientists think happens with nuts: one theory is that the body learns to fear a peanut because of a bacteria or mold that was present one time peanuts were eaten. The body mistakenly thinks BOTH the mold and the peanut are a threat. So the next time you eat a peanut it summons a threat response...aka an allergic reaction.

Another theory, called the Dual Exposure Hypothesis, is that peanut dust enters the body through a cut in the skin, and the body flags it as a threat by mistake. Then, the next time you eat a peanut, your body recognizes the proteins in the peanut as ones it has seen before (on it’s “dangerous threats” list), and once again, causes an allergic reaction to “deal” with the threat.

What We Don’t Know

Whether the exact mechanism by which food allergies are created is one of these or some entirely other reason, one thing is clear: the body’s immune system is very powerful, and an allergic reaction can be life-threatening.

Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to un-teach the immune system, which has a long memory. In the case of vaccines, this memory means we only have to get treated as kids, but maintain the benefits of protection our whole lives. With food allergy, it can mean a life-long condition, and playing Russian roulette with every meal.

This raises the important point that sometimes prevention can be more important than treatment. If you take steps to avoid getting allergies in the first place, you won’t have to worry about treating them later on.

So, while we may not completely understand exactly how allergies work, we are learning more every year about how to stop them from developing. And that itself is promising for all those who suffer from allergies.

Early Introduction

If you are pregnant or have a newborn, it is important to ask your doctor about early introduction of allergens. Since the guidelines have only changed in the past couple of years, many people still don’t know about the importance of starting to expose your 4-7 months old to peanuts and other common allergens.

Pediatricians will typically go over early introduction with you at the standard 4-month well visit for your baby. But if they don’t, you should bring it up and ask them. Early introduction is the best way we currently know of to lower the risk of children developing peanut allergies.